I have installed NLD 9 SP2

The present version of kernel is 2.6.5-7.191.
Using the upgrade from updates.novell.com I got it to kernel 2.6.5-7.252. Furthermore redcarpet autoupdate says that there is no further updates.

I need to have kernel 2.6.8+. My question is can I upgrade the kernel by just downloading any suse kernel or I have to wait for the update.

please note as per ://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=lx_suse
I have concluded that my version NLD 9 is corresponding to Suse linux 9.1 and linux-2.6.5-7.252 is the lastest update for the NLD 9 version.

Waiting for your deductions and info.

Regards.

This could be very distro dependant. The __kernel__ itself should be able to be upgraded regardless, but if the distro itself has made any changes that haven't been mainlined, then it's no guarantee that it will work.

The best bet is to wait until Novell or SUSE releases it's next kernel. Theoretically, you could pick up the latest kernel and compile it, and everything should be fine, but in practice, this isn't the smartest thing to do.

If you absolutely __need__ a newer kernel, then the only choice is to go to kernel.org and upgrade it manually, but there's no guarantee that it will be compatible with your distro. It should be, but....

If you're not familiar with kernel compiling, then I'd wait until the next official distro release. Otherwise, you're stuck in experimentation land.

I downloaded the kernel 2.6.16.8 from kernel.org and compiled and the new kernel did work, it gave novfs kernel module error, (seems it has to do with auto detection of hardware not sure) but the wireless card which I was trying to get operational with WPA2 authentication was failure as I could not load ieee80211 and ipw2200 driver.

Also when I loaded suse 10 version of the kernel and compiled the machine had a fatal error and would not boot.

I'm guessing that the novfs module is probably the Novell File System module, which apparently isn't in the main kernel. The kernel is apparently trying to load a module (novfs) which either isn't there, or isn't compatible.

The wireless forums on here probably have a lot more information about those particular wireless cards.

To get this to work, you would need to get the sources for the novfs module and patch them onto the 2.6.16.8 kernel and recompile from there - trying to insert a module that was compiled for a different version is very likely to fail. The wireless cards probably have similar module-version issues.

Once you start messing with patching and kernel sources, you're heading into a kinda grey area - if there is ANY way for you to just wait until the next Novell kernel release, I'd recommend doing that.